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On Rails
Train Travel: The World Best on Rails
Serra Verde Express, Paraná, Brazil
It crosses the Serra do Mar from the heights of Curitiba to the post-colonial coast of Paranaguá, along 110km of luxuriant Atlantic Forest.
Shinkansen (bullet train), Japan
One of the fastest trains in the world, the Japanese service shinkansen it is also one of the most exquisite. Each carriage has a team of hostesses dedicated to the well-being of passengers.
Tram 12, Lisbon, Portugal
The classic of the classics of the Portuguese capital. It travels through the streets and alleys of Lisbon on an almost roller-coaster itinerary that continues to make life easier for many residents and enchants outsiders.
Train Painting between Seoul and PyongYang, Dorasan, South Korea
One painting shows a composition about the railway line that connects Seoul to PyongYang, materializing a dream of many South and North Koreans: the reconstitution of what was their homeland until 1
Kaitangata, Shantytown, New Zealand
A young Shantytown Park employee handles the Kaitangata locomotive. This locomotive tows a small train and displays to visitors the old Infants Creek line, which previously linked the mining town &agra
Cable Car 52, San Francisco, USA
Cable car arrives at the top of a long hill in Frisco. San Francisco's cable car system was created after a series of tragedies caused by ungoverned descents of heavily loaded carriages
Kuranda Scenic Railway, Queensland, Australia
The Kuranda train winds its way through the jungle of Barron Falls National Park. This railway was built, with great effort, between Cairns and Kuranda, to end the isolation of miners in the world.
Train del Fin del Mundo, Argentina
Composition of the Tren del Fin del Mundo rises from the middle of the southern beech forest. The Tren del Fin del Mundo was built so that Ushuaia prison inmates could cut the firewood that would heat them.
Transport between Cenotes, Cuzamá, Mexico
Workers transport visitors from cenotes (underground ponds) from Cuzamá in small carriages towed by horses, along the railway line previously used by the farm henequeenera (cactus producer
Durango & Silverton Train, Colorado, USA
Another train line built to transport people and goods (including gold), in this case between Durango and the mines in the San Juan Mountains, today, Silverton.
White Pass & Yukon Railway, Alaska
It was built in the last years of the XNUMXth century to facilitate the transport of miners and supplies between Skagway, on the coast of the Alaskan Panhandle, to the Klondike area, which was then hosting the new Gold Rush.
CP Train, Oriente Station, Lisbon
Alpha-pendular or intercity train stops at Oriente station, a railway work of art designed by architect Santiago Calatrava and completed in 1998.
No way to travel is as repetitive and enriching as going on rails. Climb aboard these disparate carriages and trains and enjoy the best scenery in the world on Rails.
Text: Marco C. Pereira
Images: Marco C. Pereira-Sara Wong
We depart Fianarantsoa at 7a.m. It wasn't until 3am the following morning that we completed the 170km to Manakara. The natives call this almost secular train Train Great Vibrations. During the long journey, we felt, very strongly, those of the heart of Madagascar.
A macabre wagon accident inspired the San Francisco cable car saga. Today, these relics work as a charm operation in the city of fog, but they also have their risks.
Until 1947, the Tren del Fin del Mundo made countless trips for the inmates of the Ushuaia prison to cut firewood. Today, passengers are different, but no other train goes further south.
Built out of Cairns to save miners isolated in the rainforest from starvation by flooding, the Kuranda Railway eventually became the livelihood of hundreds of alternative Aussies.
Japan is served by millions of executives slaughtered with infernal work rates and sparse vacations. Every minute of respite on the way to work or home serves them for their inemuri, napping in public.
More or less prominent ruptures in the earth's crust, volcanoes can prove to be as exuberant as they are capricious. Some of its eruptions are gentle, others prove annihilating.
All over the world, each nation, region or town and even neighborhood has its own culture. When traveling, nothing is more rewarding than admiring, live and in loco, which makes them unique.
The law of supply and demand dictates their proliferation. Generic or specific, covered or open air, these spaces dedicated to buying, selling and exchanging are expressions of life and financial health.
Few species are more social and gregarious than humans. Man tends to emulate other homes sweet homes in the world. Some of these houses are impressive.
From the grandiose tombs of Novodevichy, in Moscow, to the boxed Mayan bones of Pomuch, in the Mexican province of Campeche, each people flaunts its own way of life. Even in death.
From the almost 1000 meters high of Angel's dancing jump to the fulminating power of Iguaçu or Victoria after torrential rains, cascades of all kinds fall over the Earth.
It's in our genes. For the pleasure of participating, for titles, honor or money, competitions give meaning to the world. Some are more eccentric than others.
Under threat from enemies from the end of time, the leaders of villages and nations built castles and fortresses. All over the place, military monuments like these continue to resist.
With pompous names or mere road codes, certain roads run through really sublime scenarios. From Road 66 to the Great Ocean Road, they are all unmissable adventures behind the wheel.
They form at high latitudes and/or altitudes. In Alaska or New Zealand, Argentina or Chile, rivers of ice are always stunning visions of an Earth as frigid as it is inhospitable.
Situated on the ancient Silk Road, Bukhara has developed for at least two thousand years as an essential commercial, cultural and religious hub in Central Asia. It was Buddhist and then Muslim. It was part of the great Arab empire and that of Genghis Khan, the Turko-Mongol kingdoms and the Soviet Union, until it settled in the still young and peculiar Uzbekistan.
Discovering the Western Visayas archipelago, we set aside a day to travel from Iloilo along the northwest coast of Guimaras. The beach tour along one of the Philippines’ countless pristine coastlines ends on the stunning Ave Maria Island.
Gorongosa was home to one of the most exuberant ecosystems in Africa, but from 1980 to 1992 it succumbed to the Civil War waged between FRELIMO and RENAMO. Greg Carr, Voice Mail's millionaire inventor received a message from the Mozambican ambassador to the UN challenging him to support Mozambique. For the good of the country and humanity, Carr pledged to resurrect the stunning national park that the Portuguese colonial government had created there.
In full Annapurna Circuit, we finally arrived in Manang (3519m). we still need acclimatize to the higher stretches that followed, we inaugurated an equally spiritual journey to a Nepalese cave of Milarepa (4000m), the refuge of a siddha (sage) and Buddhist saint.
From the grandiose tombs of Novodevichy, in Moscow, to the boxed Mayan bones of Pomuch, in the Mexican province of Campeche, each people flaunts its own way of life. Even in death.
Until the early XNUMXth century, man-eaters still feasted on the Vanuatu archipelago. In the village of Botko we find out why European settlers were so afraid of the island of Malekula.
Guwahati is the largest city in the state of Assam and in North East India. It is also one of the fastest growing in the world. For Hindus and devout believers in Tantra, it will be no coincidence that Kamakhya, the mother goddess of creation, is worshiped there.
At the beginning of the century. In the XNUMXth century, São Tomé and Príncipe generated more cocoa than any other territory. Thanks to the dedication of some entrepreneurs, production survives and the two islands taste like the best chocolate.
Kyoto was on the US atomic bomb target list and it was more than a whim of fate that preserved it. Saved by an American Secretary of War in love with its historical and cultural richness and oriental sumptuousness, the city was replaced at the last minute by Nagasaki in the atrocious sacrifice of the second nuclear cataclysm.
It's in our genes. For the pleasure of participating, for titles, honor or money, competitions give meaning to the world. Some are more eccentric than others.
1200km upstream of its delta, the Nile is no longer navigable. The last of the great Egyptian cities marks the fusion between Arab and Nubian territory. Since its origins in Lake Victoria, the river has given life to countless African peoples with dark complexions.
Lesotho is the only independent state located entirely above XNUMX meters. It is also one of the countries at the bottom of the world ranking of human development. Its haughty people resist modernity and all the adversities on the magnificent but inhospitable top of the Earth that befell them.
In 1566, the Spanish founded Iloilo in the south of the island of Panay and, until the XNUMXth century, it was the capital of the vast Spanish East Indies. Although it has been Philippine for almost one hundred and thirty years, Iloilo remains one of the most Hispanic cities in Asia.
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós thought he had discovered Terra Australis. The colony he proposed never materialized. Today, Espiritu Santo, the largest island in Vanuatu, is a kind of Eden.
Located high in the northeast of the Gulf of Bothnia, Oulu is one of Finland's oldest cities and its northern capital. A mere 220km from the Arctic Circle, even in the coldest months it offers a prodigious outdoor life.
Effusive as ever, Ernest Hemingway called Key West "the best place I've ever been...". In the tropical depths of the contiguous US, he found evasion and crazy, drunken fun. And the inspiration to write with intensity to match.
The unpredictability of rivers in the wettest region on Earth never deterred the Khasi and the Jaintia. Faced with the abundance of trees elastic fig tree in their valleys, these ethnic groups got used to molding their branches and strains. From their time-lost tradition, they have bequeathed hundreds of dazzling root bridges to future generations.
Aside from the political and military events precipitated by Russia, from mid-September onwards, autumn takes over the country. In previous years, when visiting Saint Petersburg, we witnessed how the cultural and northern capital was covered in a resplendent yellow-orange. A dazzling light that hardly matches the political and military gloom that had spread in the meantime.
In colonial times, a Dutch farmer developed a farm in the northeast of Aruba. As tourism boomed, authorities designated a large protected area around the old farm and named it in his honor. Today, Arikok National Park is home to some of the island’s most iconic natural and historical sites.
In the 80s, Soviet leaders renewed Khiva in a softened version that, in 1990, UNESCO declared a World Heritage Site. The USSR disintegrated the following year. Khiva has preserved its new luster.
Fed up with waiting for the bearded old man to descend down the chimney, we reverse the story. We took advantage of a trip to Finnish Lapland and passed through its furtive home.
Neighbors Bora Bora and Maupiti have superior scenery but Tahiti has long been known as paradise and there is more life on the largest and most populous island of French Polynesia, its ancient cultural heart.
In Helsinki, Holy Saturday is also celebrated in a Gentile way. Hundreds of families gather on an offshore island, around lit fires to chase away evil spirits, witches and trolls
By road and aboard the Flam Railway, on one of the steepest railway routes in the world, we reach Flam and the entrance to the Sognefjord, the largest, deepest and most revered of the Scandinavian fjords. From the starting point to the last station, this monumental Norway that we have unveiled is confirmed.
The law of supply and demand dictates their proliferation. Generic or specific, covered or open air, these spaces dedicated to buying, selling and exchanging are expressions of life and financial health.
After two days of impasse due to torrential rain, we set out to discover the Tortuguero National Park. Channel after channel, we marvel at the natural richness and exuberance of this Costa Rican fluvial marine ecosystem.
It's almost 30 degrees and the glaciers are melting. In Alaska, entrepreneurs have little time to get rich. Until the end of August, dog mushing cannot stop.